Hi Kayla,

Galileo was one of the first to study sunspots with a telescope; he began a systematic study of them and discussed his findings with Christoph Scheiner, with whom he argued about their nature. Thomas Harriott also studied sunspots in England using thick clouds at sunrise and sunset (as K.D. Leka says...NEVER repeat what Harriott did) as a filter. The Chinese, no doubt, saw sunspots in the same way as Harriott. According to Dr. David Pankenier, an expert on ancient Chinese astronomy, there is a record of sunspots from the Book of Changes that may be from the 1st millennium B.C.E. Other records begin about 165 B.C.E. Modern Chinese in north China have reported sunspots in late spring/early summer at which time there is a lot of dust in the air, making sunspot observations a possibility.